Abstract
In science learning, context is an important dimension of any scientific object or phenomenon, and context-dependent variations prove to be as critical for deep understanding as are abstract concepts, laws and rules. The hypothesis presented is that a context gap between two students can be illuminating to highlight the respective general-particular aspects of an object or phenomenon. Furthermore, provoking a perturbation during the learning process to obtain the emergence of such an event could be a productive tutoring strategy. The authors introduce the emergence of context effects as a problem space, to be modeled in the system, and propose a model of the contextual dimension (MazCalc) associated with an analytical view of its modeling, based on a metaphor in physics. A Learning Scenario (Gounouy) has been designed and tested with two groups of learners in Guadeloupe and in Quebec, and MazCalc has been instantiated for this pilot study. Finally, an architecture of a Context-Aware Intelligent Tutoring System is presented, with services to learners, teachers and researchers.
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Acknowledgments
Sophie Fecil, science teacher at Collège de Guenette, Guadeloupe, France; Julie Poulin, teacher at Henri-Bourassa et Soleil de l’Aube school and Alain Stockless, ICT pedagogical advisor at Commission scolaire des Affluents, Québec, Canada; Alexandra Vorobyova for English révision; Rectorat de l’académie de Guadeloupe; the LICEF research center, Tele University, Quebec and the CRREF research center, University of The French West Indies.
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Forissier, T., Bourdeau, J., Mazabraud, Y., Nkambou, R. (2014). Computing the Context Effect for Science Learning. In: Brézillon, P., Gonzalez, A. (eds) Context in Computing. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1887-4_17
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